Brooke Brown

The epitome of a Renaissance man, Leonardo Da Vinci was a scientist, artist, mathematician and engineer, among numerous other vocations.

His list of accomplishments and studies is extensive and broad-sweeping, confounding even the brightest of today's intellectuals, who usually commit their professional lives to just one area of study.

Now, the wonder of Da Vinci's ingenuity is explored at "The Da Vinci Experience," an exhibit of Da Vinci's inventions featured at Utah Valley State College's Woodbury Art Museum. From life-size replicas to hands-on demonstrations of Da Vinci's sketches, "The Da Vinci Experience" offers an interactive exhibit that is centered on a modern-life application of Da Vinci's ideas.

"We want people to see the inspiration that they can take away from his inventions," said Marcus Vincent, director of the Woodbury Art Museum. "Some of Da Vinci's sketches were figments of the imagination, to solve problems that didn't even exist at that time. It's like he was daydreaming on paper."

Vincent said Da Vinci's daydreams distracted the artist from his "day job" as a painter, yet those sketches provide the main feature of the exhibit: Da Vinci's myriad flight, water, war and simple machine inventions, replicated by an Italian father-and-son duo in the 1950s.

After interning at The Da Vinci Institute in Florence, Italy, Carlo Niccolai took part in the post-war movement toward recreating Da Vinci's works rather than studying them exclusively for academics.

Niccolai and his son Gabriele Niccolai showcased the replicas in their own museum in Milan, and then turned the works into an international traveling exhibit.

Now available for experimentation and tinkering in Orem, the replicas have a seal of legitimacy from UCLA professor Carlo Pedretti.

"Pedretti is the world's No. 1 expert on Da Vinci," said the exhibit's international managing partner, Luigi Rizzo, who was in town for the exhibit's opening. "He approved Da Vinci's codexes for the Queen of England. The fact that he has approved these, shows they are the real thing."

In addition to the sketch replicas, the exhibit also includes reproductions of Da Vinci's paintings, an educational area and a gift shop.

"I have been to 15 exhibits in the past year and a half," Rizzo said. "This one has the best educational aspect to help absorb what you learn, and the reproductions are excellently done."

Godfrey Harris and Kenny Katz, part of the group managing the American portion of the exhibit, added the additional elements of paintings and hands-on activities, which include opportunities to imitate Da Vinci's backward-style writing and portable bridge assembly.

"This exhibit really gives you the chance to experience what it would have been like to be Da Vinci," Rizzo said.